Objective and Subjective Knowledge Relationships: A Quantitative Analysis of Consumer Research Findings

Abstract

This article presents the results of a meta-analysis of empirical findings associated with the relationship between objective knowledge (OK; i.e., accurate stored information that consumers possess) and subjective knowledge (SK; i.e., consumers' perceptions of their own knowledge). Results of the meta-analysis reveal that OK-SK relationships from prior research were stronger for products versus nonproducts, for public versus private goods, and for SK measures containing an expert versus an "average" standard of comparison. These results and other findings offer a series of implications for future research regarding investigations of consumer knowledge. (c) 2008 by JOURNAL OF CONSUMER RESEARCH, Inc..

All in the Family? Parental Roles in the Epidemic of Childhood Obesity

“…Fortunately, consumer research (Alba and Hutchinson 1987;Brucks 1985;Carlson et al 2009) may be useful in both understanding the impacts of expertise and disentangling objective knowledge (what parents know) and subjective knowledge (what they think they know).…”

How does consumer knowledge affect environmentally sustainable choices? Evidence from a cross-country latent class analysis of food labels

“…This leads to substantial 155 correlation between both types of knowledge (Brucks, 1985;Raju, et al, 1995), although this 156 was found to be stronger for products relative to non-products (e.g., financial or medical 157 services) and public relative to private goods (Carlson, et al, 2009 regard to carbon footprint information was shown to increase intentions to purchase products 165 with a lower carbon impact (Wikoff, Rainbolt, & Wakeland, 2012).…”

Education, Educational Services and their Quality

“…Past research suggests that subjective knowledge is highly correlated to objective knowledge (Carlson et al 2009;Kwon and Lee 2009;Moorman et al 2004). Subjective knowledge refers to the degree to which consumer perceive how much they know about the product (Brucks 1985;Park et al, 1994).…”

“…Subjective knowledge refers to the degree to which consumer perceive how much they know about the product (Brucks 1985;Park et al, 1994). As consumer judgment and decision are largely affected by self-assessed knowledge (Carlson et al 2009;Kwon and Lee 2009;Moorman et al 2004), this study thus adopted subjective knowledge to evaluate product knowledge and measured the construct by using the items from Brucks (1985) and Park et al (1994). The three product knowledge items were: "I feel I am confident in using digital camera/leisure farm information compared to the average consumers", "I feel I am knowledgeable in using digital camera/leisure farm information compared to the average consumers", and "I feel I am confident about my ability to comprehend digital camera/leisure farm information".…”